It may have been one of the worst films of 2007, but videogame adaptation Hitman could well be about to get a sequel, according to a report over at IESB.
Regardless of quality, and of how badly it wasted the considerable talents of its star Timothy Olyphant, Hitman reportedly made more than $100m worldwide (on a budget of $30m), even before DVD revenue and TV rights.
The script is being written by Kyle Ward, who has also knocked out an adaptation of another game, the super-violent Kane and Lynch, rumoured to be starring Bruce Willis (although the grapevine has gone quiet lately).
Hitman in pixel form is a difficult and unusual third-person shooter, in that it rewards the player for not going in with all guns blazing. The fewer bullets you use and the less attention you draw, the better a hitman you are. That's a very difficult ethos to translate to an action movie franchise, and as the previous movie found, it's also hard to suspend an audience's disbelief in a guy who's supposed to be invisible but rarely disguises his stand-out baldness or the goddamn barcode on his head.
But maybe we should be more optimistic. Hitman is a great series of games and could make a decent movie, if it was lucky enough to find a team that actually put some thought into it. If lessons are learned from the first one, maybe a sequel could be an improvement.
What do you think? No cast details yet. Would Olyphant be insane to return?